Code, bar-code episode

Gallery IHN presents the solo exhibition of Ju Hye Yang, who had showed various public art projects by using color dots and bar codes. While studying abroad in France, the artist marked a color dot above alphabet letters and expressed them as an idea of time and interaction. A bar code, which is recognized through light, is newly reinterpreted through Ju Hye Yang's installation artworks, such as buildings that are covered by various colors of bar codes. One of the most represented installation art work is the building of Ministry of Culture ＆ Tourism in 2003, Monument for World Ceramic Exposition in 2001, installation for the Occupational Safety Conference at LG twin building in 1996, and the installation for the construction of Ilshin textile building in 1990. Moreover, she was proposed for the bar code installation project by Kyobo building, the National Theater of Korea, French Cultural Center and has been recently selected as the 'representative artists of the year 2005' held by Arts Council Korea and had a retrospective at the Arko Art Museum.

This exhibition proceeds from the installation work of the French National Library driven since 2002, a theme proposed by the artist. The French National Library, designed by Dominique Perrault, is valued by its minimized space between nature and human using a dramatic inside and outside space. Ju Hye Yang has installed the bar code, which is her modeling element, at the outside floor of the French National Library. With her active interference of architectural environment, she had attempted to integrate living space with art, through figurative experience of the exterior space.

The arrangement of the works in the first exhibit hall has considered the shape of Gallery IHN's exhibition space. The bar code that starts from the ground continues to the wall side and by its corner, an "object" of the French National Library architectural form is installed. The exterior installation work is compressed into a small space like one in the gallery, and it is modified by its characteristics. The second exhibition hall presents diverse plane works based on the artist's main figurative element, the bar code. By applying the bar codes on transparent and reflective layers of various colors, it permits the light to let their forms appear naturally.